Part 1. Political Science and Third Political Parties

If dedication, hard work, and/or experience were all it takes to
get a new political party off the ground, the Libertarian Party
would have a significant caucus in Congress right now. It
doesn’t. Some other third parties have some spikes of
success. Socialist Bernie Sanders got into Congress (though he was
technically an independent). The Reform Party managed to elect
Jesse Ventura for governor of Minnesota. But for persistent ballot
access and boots on the ground, it’s hard to beat the
Libertarian Party as third parties go. Alas, this isn’t
saying much.

Given this limited level of success pundits, political
scientists, and voters generally write off third parties, save when
they get a celebrity candidate (like Ross Perot or Jesse Ventura).
There is even a “law” to this effect: Duverger’s
Law, that says that third parties cannot get traction in a
plurality-take-all system like we have for most U.S. elections.

I have an audacious claim. I claim that Duverger’s Law
is not an unbreakable iron law. I have identified two
loopholes. In theory, the Libertarian Party could exploit them
and become a major party. In the real world, it won’t. There
are too many dedicated activists who find the price of success to
be too high. After nearly a quarter century following the party
line, I
spearheaded an attempt to get the party to play realistic
politics. The attempt was half successful, temporarily. Half
success is not good enough.

It is easier to start from scratch.

So here I shall reveal the loopholes in Duverger’s Law to
any who are interested. If you can muster a cadre of volunteers and
donors a fraction as dedicated as what the Libertarian Party has,
you can launch a successful third political party if you follow the
instructions herein. (I will be using Libertarian Party examples
throughout this manual as that is where my experience lies. But the
lessons can be applied to other ideologies as well.)

To find the loopholes, we start with why Duverger’s Law
works most of the time.

Observation 1: You have to win!

Libertarians fantasize about having a presidential candidate
garner 5% of the vote. Actually, they would be thrilled to break
1%. LP News attempts to boost morale after each November
failure by pointing out the total number of people overall who
voted Libertarian. They have had major pushes in the past to
contest as many Congressional elections as possible. Should the day
come that Libertarians garner 5% of the total Congressional vote
there would be great celebration. (Maybe they have since I left. I
don’t know.)

Yet, by themselves all these goals are utterly
worthless!

The United States does not elect its legislatures using
proportional representation. It has district elections, and most of
these districts are single-member. A party can theoretically win
20% of the vote overall and still not win a single seat. A
party that wins only 5% of the vote overall is extremely unlikely
to win a single seat.

The Green, Libertarian, and Constitution parties operate as
if the U.S. had proportional representation. Strategies which
work in Europe do not apply in the United States. To obtain a seat
at the table in the U.S., you have to win somewhere.
In a single-member district race there is no prize for second or
third place. Win or be irrelevant.

This is a very simple observation, trivial to verify. Yet time
and time again, activists and strategists within existing third
parties go into denial and try to rationalize around this fact.
While this is an easy to understand fact, it can be hard to accept
for the dedicated. It is an inconvenient truth.

True, there are some proportional representation races in this
country, especially at the local level. And third parties have done
better there. But most of these races are non-partisan, so why
have third parties for non-partisan races?

It is true that you can get some publicity by running for office
on a third party ticket. But you can get publicity for your ideas
many other ways — cheaper ways. This is even truer in the
Internet Age than in the past. Third parties are mostly
pointless without at least prospect of eventual victory.

While this observation may appear trivial, it has profound
strategic implications for marketing a political party. In the next
chapter we shall look at our first theorem, based on this simple
observation. The laws of political science impose a hard
constraint on U.S. political parties, and the Libertarian,
Green, and Constitution parties all violate it.

Read the Book

People wanted an ebook version of the Plan here on this site. So I started cleaning
up, reformatting, and adding a huge amount of content. The book is about three
times the length of the free online version -- and easier to read.

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